I have noted in the past the trade in blades within the Sahel, the great trade routes that bore them on their long journey over the desert sands, but I have written little about the other key element of warfare in these cultures. As much a part of the panoply of war as the spear and the sword.

The horse. This might sound a little anticlimactic but maintaining stables in the Sahel was no mean feat. The climate was not always well suited and the danger of the tsetse fly limited the range in which they could be used. But for the great kingdoms of Hausa land, Bornu, Kanem and Sudan the horse was the greatest mount one could achieve. Even today the emirs of Hausaland can be seen riding great white horses in Durbars, an integral part of their cultural history.
Central stables were often maintained and horses were a prized sign of wealth and an integral part of war and the commerce of slaving.

Emir of Bedde in Bornu

The origins of the war horse in the Sahel lie with Kanem, who in turn have the Mamluks of Egypt to thank, as with so much of the Sahel cavalry model. The horses were the great Barb of the North African coast. Renowned for their stamina, the breed adapted well to the Sahel, although stocks needed to be refreshed due to the still harsh conditions.

The Sahel was a band of land the horse could function in, to the north the camel was supreme in the harsh desert, to the south the forests prohibited their spread. But in the Sahel they were a treasure.

A Hausa rider in finery.

Often they were fitted with the same quilted armor or Yan Lifida as the riders and often had a brass or metal head guard as well. Taking care of the royal stables for an emir was an official post of prestige and well respected.

A Baggara cavalryman with full horse armor on display

While the art of mounting blades, forging spears and many other crafts of the past have faded breeding and displaying horses remains an integral part of society and culture in many areas of the Sahel to this day and gives a delightful window into the military history of these areas and the path these horse breeds took to reach the interior of Africa.

While all of us who have an interest in takouba owe a debt to Lloyd Cabot Briggs for his seminal article on Tuareg swords, there is an interesting typological distinction he makes which has stuck, somewhat unquestioned, for years.
Briggs divides the hilts of Tuareg swords into a central type, less peaked pommel and leather covered guard, southern, larger pommel and brass guard plates often with round extensions and a Sudanese type with a more spherical pommel and leather guard and grip.
While there are certainly regional preferences to be found with takouba, Briggs seems to have stumbled to a degree on what appears to be rather the lineage of the type and the degradation of form to be observed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

To be fair, Briggs article was focused on European blades to be found in takouba and made no great attempts to decipher the history of the type or the possibilities of regional classification. However, since there is so little material published, particularly in English, regarding takouba what little he did write has of course had a certain amount of influence.
Briggs noted, as far as we can tell accurately what was observable at the time regarding the styles popular in the Tuareg regions he was interested in.

Unfortunately for a trained anthropologist he makes a number of curious errors with the oddest being the assertion that what is clearly a Sudanese kaskara is a “Hausa” sword type. Given the wealth of museum examples of takouba and photographic evidence available at the time of Hausa carrying takouba this oversight seems almost unforgivable and casts a very uncertain light on Briggs’ work outside of his examination of purely the European blades.

Briggs seems to use three main factors in his classification. The shape of the pommel, the width/form of the guard and the use of leather or metal plates on the guard with the additional note that the grips on the Sudanese type are spindle shaped.
It is bizarre then if this classification is accurate that almost invariably older takouba have both spherical pommels and brass guards. Of course there are exceptions, but following Briggs classification the number of supposedly southern type swords turning up in areas that fall under his central classification are quite surprising. For example the following image.

The central type is declared to have wide flat quillons with leather covering, but plenty of examples show the smaller square quillon form as well.

The brass plate examples are supposedly of this smaller square format, but many are in fact quite broad with this one having a pommel form Briggs attributes to his central type although this is a hilt made entirely of brass!

So, both in terms of the evidence on the ground and the extant examples, this classification from Briggs doesn’t really hold up. This article is not designed to somehow belittle his work, but merely to point out there is a better way to examine the issue.
To do this, it is necessary to step back and start from the beginning. Which is the construction of the three key elements, the pommel, guard and grip. Rather than being the regional attributes Briggs seemed to think they were, in my opinion they are key indicators of age and for very specific reasons.
Firstly let’s examine the guards. Briggs accurately notes a different in the wide flat guards and the stubbier square form. But there’s a third type as well, the wing shaped guards that are also found on reasonably old swords.
Square guards are made of one piece of metal, bent at the back to form the back of the guard and with small blocks inserted and brazed in place to form the square.
The wing shaped guards use two pieces of metal for each side with small blocks inserted at the ends. Meaning the profile when viewed along the flat of the blade has a wing shape to it.

In later swords the small blocks are not present and it is simply the two pieces of metal. This is the common guard form which is leather covered.
So, is this a regional style or a sign of age? For me the rarity of the square form, coupled with the blades typically found in these mounts, the obvious patina and aging visible to the eye and the pommel forms indicate this is characteristic which can be used to estimate age.

The use of brass guard plates seems to be a similar characteristic in that if a guard has holes, it was designed to have plates. The vast majority of older swords seem to have had this.

Finally the shape of the pommel, as with guards we can see an observable trend in period photographs towards flatter stacked pommels over time. This is not just in Tuareg regions but across Nigeria, north Cameroon, Mali, Niger etc. as I've discussed many times. This indicates these stylistic changes are not merely regional and isolated.
Can we achieve a precise typology? Probably not at this time, but we can say that swords with spherical pommels, square guards and brass plates are likely to be older than their counterparts and have nothing to do with being central, Sudanese or southern.

I will never claim to be much of a restorer, but occasionally I happen along a piece in need of rescuing. Something that many would pass over due to condition, but that has value because of its features regardless. One such piece came up on auction in December of last year. I was fortunate enough to secure the lot and by February it was in my hands.

The condition was extremely poor, covered in active rust and dirt which if left untouched would do long term damage to the sword. The pommel in fact was already in danger of collapsing due to neglect while the markings on the European blade were so obscured that some acquaintances did not think I would be able to restore it.

However I like a challenge and besides the blade the sword had the type of pommel and even more importantly, the type of guard and grip I am studying at the moment. In other words, despite the condition, the sword was valuable to me.

The image above shows the state the sword was in, deep pitting, horrible rusting and generally a bit of a wreck. I don't want to delve into the details of what methods I use when dealing with this type of corrosion, but suffice to say it's nothing special, mainly time and elbow grease. In any case after a number of sessions the sword has reached this state, not entirely finished, but most of the way there.

The blade is a single fuller pattern from Europe with a large ricasso block. it is rather small compared to most takouba, with a length of 75cm and a width of 3.75cm.

The engraving was largely recovered as well which I was quite pleased about. The blade features astral symbols, popular in Europe for quite a period of time.

These include the crescent moon, stars and the sun.

The sword is missing the original brass guard plates which would have given a bit more contrast and flair to the piece, but even the guard itself is an interesting and useful example. It has the box like construction I associate with the oldest pieces we know. It even has some interesting geometric line decoration.

The entire hilt is brazed together in the usual fashion with brass and copper.

The point I'm making here is that even a sword in poor condition, with obvious flaws and no hope to ever be a pristine collectible, is still a valuable piece of history. I think this last image, showing it to scale with two of the other older takouba I own will help put that in perspective. I don't believe in ignoring swords that need a little help, every example has value to truly understanding their fascinating past.

One of the most interesting features of ethnographic swords which have a long history of using imported blades is that the locally made blades tend to closely emulate the imports, both in style and the markings applied. Over time it is not inaccurate to say that the form of takouba and kaskara, as well as many West African swords, owes more to the blades imported and then copied, than to any locally derived shape.

Marks in particular were widely copied, seen as identifiers of known quality.
This habit led to a number of common patterns and marks being produced within Africa with various levels of refinement during at least the 19th century and likely before as well. Common patterns imported became the common form produced locally as well.

The extremely typical triple fuller pattern with two half moon marks is perhaps the best example of this. It is a ubiquitous design in the Sahel. Some examples are of a quality good enough to fool the casual observer into thinking they are the genuine European article.
None of this is a slight on the skills and capabilities of native smiths and armourers.

Their replication of European blades is the product of clever marketing and the demands of the buying public rather than a lack of ability to produce differing blade forms. As I've detailed on this site in the past, unique local forms do exist, even if they are in the minority.

However rather than look at one the triple fullers, the sword above is a little more interesting. The blade seems to be of entirely native make but has seen quite a bit of use, it has been remounted in the "sandwich" forte style. But that's not the intriguing part! The blade has two marks applied, but the same marks are replicated on the new forte, meaning we can be sure they are all native applications.

The mark is an interesting hourglass shape which is likely an attempt to replicate or at least imitate the Italian "fly" marking commonly found on schiavona and similar blades as can be seen on the Italian blade I own, the mark pictured below.

This effort to replicate the mark and place it so many times on the blade and forte indicates the value that was associated with European blade stamps and markings. Certainly a sense of quality was derived from such signs.

While we know that marks such as the lion were given their own local talismanic values, this mark seems too obscure and abstract for that purpose. Leaving us with the conclusion that this is one of the highly enjoyable contradictions of Sahel arms, an authentic fake.

As an unabashedly focused collector I am often asked by fellow collectors why I rarely obtain arms outside of takouba and very related forms. I have always felt one cannot judge a sword form on the most typical examples. Rather, it is necessary to handle as many examples as possible to form any sort of opinion that runs deeper than a cursory description. This belief, coupled with the financial restrictions every collector faces has limited my collecting. For every interesting object I see, I mentally count how many takouba that equals.

A wide range of takouba

This naturally leads to a somewhat lopsided collection. While many collectors have a multitude of forms, enabling more detailed examination of cross cultural diffusion and variance, my collection is monolithic. Or at least that is how it appears to an outsider. The single sword type I collect spans an area the size of Europe. An example from Timbuktu in northern Mali to Dikwa in northern Nigeria represents a journey of some 2,600km. From Ghat in modern day Libya to Bida in Nigeria an even further journey. The takouba then is a sword type as ubiquitous to this massive region as the cross hilted sword was to medieval Europe. The point being that collecting what is often considered a single 'type' within the ethnographic world can in fact be an analog to what would be considered many distinct regional and historical forms among other collecting fields.

The devil's in the detail

There is a trend I have commented on before, of collectors who seek out a representative example of each supposed 'type' to fill out a collection. This continues to reinforce the false tribalistic approach so unfortunately common among many ethnographic collectors. This is of particular concern with African arms in regions which were closely connected by trade and religion to the wider world, because it propagates the myth of the dark continent with small, isolated groups. The truth, as I have expounded upon on this site at some length is of course entirely different.

A rough map of the takouba range

I'm left then with the tricky situation of being considered a specialist by most, but in fact regarding myself as a complete generalist within my chosen field of collecting. I would be the first to admit my collecting his hardly global, even with a regional context I am selective to a certain form of sword, but I am by no means as specialized.

There is a danger collectors often fall into when looking at period photography of arms, armour and warriors of inferring a historical past on the basis of how these cultures appeared in the 19th and 20th centuries. A tendency to assume a static nature to these societies and the continued permeation of the myth of Africa being stuck in a time warp.

Certainly period photography is useful and early photos are something I use quite often for dating benchmarks. However, it is key to remember the context of the time they were taken. For many Sahel kingdoms the late 1800s and early 1900s were a time of serious decline that had started as far back as the turn of the 19th century. Decline in major trade routes, constant ravages of war from the Fulani Jihad, the travellers and colonialists often were seeing the last gasp of once great empires. Not their flourishing peak.

The caption for this image is the sort of nonsensical attribution common at the time. The maille is likely from Egypt.

Take the simple example of helms and maille. Once imported from North Africa and Egypt in large numbers, by the 19th century such items were growing rare. Replacements were difficult to find, the source industries in Europe and the Arab/Berber coast no longer existed. What was already in the Sahel was antique. The result was that what Europeans saw in the 19th century was in many cases already centuries old. These were relics of the glory days, a ragtag assembly which appeared as crude as many of the war ravaged towns and cities that explorers and colonial forces came across.

The reality is far more nuanced. The cavalry of many Sahel kingdoms belonged both by strength of tradition and equipment to the North African Berber/Mamluk panoply. That a Medieval style of warfare lasted longer in the Sahel is simply a fact of the conditions and requirements of the region. Besides a few brief Ottoman inspired adventures with gunpowder weapons in Bornu in the late 16th century most of the Sahel did not see the emergence of the musket as a serious force until the 19th century.

In the 14th-18th centuries these were not isolated African tribal societies that simply happened to trade goods north across the caravan routes. Rather, these were well connected kingdoms with embassies, trading outposts and a myriad of other connections to the Islamic north. Had they not been Morocco would hardly have bothered to invade Songhai, the Mamluks to press into Sudan or Ifriqiya to maintain relations with Kanem-Bornu.

A photo then serves as a window, often details of times past can be spotted. Small hints of former kingdoms and glories, but they are not snapshots of how things used to be in Medieval Africa. One has only to look at a 1900s takouba and some of the much older swords I have shown on this site to see the differences.

A typical western Sahel cavalryman is a far cry from what is now seen in traditional durbars and parades. Clad in maille and or quilted armour (also introduced from Egypt and North Africa), helmed and wielding a great lance with a sturdy takouba with iron pommel and guard at his side, this was a contemporary for several centuries to Islamic forces above the Sahara.

In summary, I am in no way disregarding the importance of historical photos and use them often, but they should be taken as what they are. Moments captured in time and not necessarily indicative of times before.